Pig-cell diabetes effort moves to Australia

By SIMON COLLINS, science reporter

The New Zealand company that is trying to develop a cure for diabetes using pig cells is moving to Australia where it believes it will get Government approval to test its discovery.

The move will see an Australian business take over the company. Twenty jobs in Auckland are likely to go, and diabetics in Australia will get the benefit of pig cell implants which may remove the need for artificial insulin injections.

Australia will also get what the company's founder, Professor Bob Elliott, said could have become "a huge industry".

"It won't be a New Zealand thing any more," he said.

"We have missed out by bureaucratic delays and pusillanimous political leadership. It's the rugby world cup all over again."

He said the company had been unable to raise money in New Zealand because of a law banning transplants from animals to people unless an exemption is granted by the Minister of Health.

In contrast, a committee of Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council recommended this week that animal/human transplants should be able to "proceed cautiously under centrally administered guidelines". The policy is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

The Australian newspaper reported that the guidelines could be adopted without needing legislation, and clinical trials could begin next year. Diatranz is negotiating a trial with 10 patients at a Sydney clinic.

The chief adviser on safety and regulation for the New Zealand Ministry of Health, Dr Bob Boyd, said there was nothing to stop Diatranz applying for an exemption to do a similar trial here under the new law.

But Dr Elliott said the company was unable to raise capital in New Zealand because of the legal situation and had abandoned its attempts to do trials here.

"We have had an antagonistic attitude from the Ministry of Health and the current Minister of Health, whereas in Australia it's the opposite," he said.

The company also abandoned a proposed trial of the pig cell implants in the Cook Islands after the New Zealand Government advised the Cooks against it.

A Diatranz director, David Collinson, said the company was being kept afloat in New Zealand only by personal contributions from directors.

He said the insulin-producing cells would continue to be extracted initially from pigs at Diatranz's clean facility in South Auckland and flown to Sydney. But the new Australian owner is expected to move the whole business there eventually unless the New Zealand regulations change.

Asked about the 20 jobs in Auckland, Dr Elliott said: "I guess they'll evaporate."

The Sydney trial will insert pig cells protected by an alginate or seaweed coating. Unlike earlier trials in Mexico, it will not use sertoli cells extracted from the testicles to protect the pig cells from attack by the body's immune system.

The 10 diabetics in the Sydney trial will also have to be aged 45 or over to minimise the risk of viruses being passed on to unborn children. The Mexican trial had been criticised for using teenagers.

Health Minister Annette King said there was no guarantee that Diatranz would get approval for clinical trials of pig cell implants in Australia even if the Australian Government approved animal/human transplants in principle, because of the risk of a retrovirus from pigs infecting the human population.

"My dealings with the Australians on things like setting standards and BSE indicate that they have been very, very cautious, as we have been," she said.

However, a National Party health spokesman, Dr Paul Hutchison, said Diatranz's decision was "a real indictment upon the Government and the environment they have created for research in New Zealand".

He said the Government purported to be worried about the very small risk of a pig virus getting into humans through insulin-producing islet cells, yet it did not test refugees from Africa for the much greater risk of the HIV virus, until they arrived in this country.

nzherald.co.nz/health